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Jeff Sessions officially sworn in as US Attorney General

The 70-year-old Alabama senator was confirmed Wednesday with a final vote of 52-47

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Updated: 11:38 AM EST Feb 9, 2017

Carolyn Kaster, APSOURCE: Carolyn Kaster, AP

Jeff Sessions officially sworn in as US Attorney General

The 70-year-old Alabama senator was confirmed Wednesday with a final vote of 52-47

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Updated: 11:38 AM EST Feb 9, 2017

Jeff Sessions was officially sworn in as the US Attorney General on Thursday. The 70-year-old Alabama senator was confirmed Wednesday with a final vote of 52-47.

Last month, Sessions laid out a sharply conservative vision for the Justice Department he would oversee, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration, gun violence and the "scourge of radical Islamic terrorism" and to keep open the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

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He said waterboarding, a now-banned harsh interrogation technique that Trump has at times expressed support for, was "absolutely improper and illegal."

Though he said he would prosecute immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and criticized as constitutionally "questionable" an executive action by President Barack Obama that shielded certain immigrants from deportation, he said he did "not support the idea that Muslims, as a religious group, should be denied admission to the United States."

Sessions asserted that he could confront Trump if needed, saying an attorney general must be prepared to resign if asked to do something "unlawful or unconstitutional."

During a January hearing, Sessions vigorously denied that he had ever called the NAACP "un-American." He said he had never harbored racial animus, calling the allegations — which included that he had referred to a black attorney in his office as "boy" — part of a false caricature.

"It wasn't accurate then," Sessions said. "It isn't accurate now."

He said he "understands the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters. I have witnessed it."

"I know we need to do better. We can never go back," Sessions said. "I am totally committed to maintaining the freedom and equality that this country has to provide to every citizen."

Sessions, known as one of the most staunchly conservative members of the Senate, smiled amiably as he began his presentation, taking time to introduce his grandchildren, joking about Alabama football and making self-deprecating remarks about his strong Southern accent.

He has solid support from the Senate's Republican majority and from some Democrats in conservative-leaning states.

Sessions will succeed Attorney General Loretta Lynch and would be in a position to reshape Justice Department priorities not only in civil rights but also environmental enforcement, criminal justice and national security.

"We need to be sure that when we criticize law officers, it is narrowly focused on the right basis for criticism," he said, adding that "to smear whole departments places those officers at greater risk."

Sessions was first elected to the Senate in 1996 and before that served as Alabama attorney general and a U.S. attorney.

He's been a reliably conservative voice in Congress, supporting government surveillance programs and opposing a 2013 bipartisan immigration bill that included a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.